Lady Bird charms, Justice League assembles and local boy makes good again in Wonder

The list is long this week, but there are some very good films on it. And remember also, that the excellent film about Jane Goodall, which played once last Saturday, starts a full week at the VanCity theatre today. Read on.

Lady Bird: 4 ½ stars

Justice League: 3

Wonder: 3 ½

Mudbound: 4

Paradise: 3

The Divine Order: 3 ½

Blade of the Immortal: 2 ½

The Star: --

LADY BIRD: Greta Gerwig is finally getting known beyond the small indie films she’s acted in, and sometimes co-written. That’s because she’s taken memories from her own life, put them into a script, hired a great cast and directed one of the best movies of the year. This should appeal to anyone who remembers their growing-up years: parental arguments, competition for status and maybe even friends at school, pressure to decide what to make of yourself. The elements are familiar but it’s compassion and a warm heart, not adolescent humor, that drive the film. It feels authentic.

Irish actress Saoirse Ronan plays a young woman like Gerwig, in Sacramento, California. She gave herself the nickname Lady Bird and the dream “to go where culture is.” So no state university for her; she wants to aim much higher. Dad (Tracy Letts) is supportive, but he’s pretty ineffectual. Mom (Laurie Metcalf) is the strong-willed one and several very real-sounding arguments ensue. It’s a very good representation of a mother-daughter relationship. And there’s much more as the film looks around at the whole of Lady Bird’s life. Her best friend is frumpy, but that rich girl looks interesting. A boy from France appeals to her more than a local (Lucas Hedges, last seen in Manchester By the Sea). She’s not a snob; just a young woman with still-forming goals. The film is energetic and brisk and evocative. (5th Avenue, where there’s an age limit. Too bad for this one). 4 ½ out of 5

JUSTICE LEAGUE: I’m not going to trash this one, like some have been doing. I am going to say that in this year of very good comic book movies, or to put it another way, of Thor, Wonder Woman and Spider-man, this one falls short. It’s got far more action than story. That’s fun enough for some fans, but there’s more required here. Like a plotline that holds together. This one is all over the place as the people at DC chase their competitors at Marvel with their own Avengers-like group. You need to do careful story building to assemble a whole team like that. It’s all pretty rushed here, probably to make way for the many battles.

Superman is dead, you might remember from a recent movie. That brings an old foe from out of nowhere to destroy the world. Fans familiar with history and trivia may know of this Steppenwolf guy who was around decades ago in the comics. He’s new to most of us and he’s got an uncle, Darkseid, who is even worse and gets a brief mention. (A hint towards some future film, as is so common?)

Batman (by ever serious Ben Affleck) builds an “alliance” to fight back. He recruites Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), The Flash (Ezra Miller), and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and get this, brings Superman back to life. That’s not a spoiler. Henry Cavill’s name is first in the credits. Other notables are Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Jeremy Irons as Alfred the Butler and Connie Nilesen as Queen Hippolyta. Yes, we’re back to the land of the Amazons for a time, and underwater, and in Gotham City. The story spreads itself thin. Of the characters only The Flash and Aquaman make much of an impression; they get the funny lines that have been added and anyway they have their own movies coming. And big problem: Steppenwolf (a special effect voiced by played by Ciarán Hinds is one of the most distant villains you’ll ever see. He just doesn’t seem like such a big threat. Other than all that, the film’s OK. (5th Avenue, Scotiabank, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres everywhere) 3 out of 5

WONDER: Local acting wonder-boy Jacob Tremblay is back as another child struggling with being an outsider. This time he’s got Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson as parents, his own dad and sister nearby in small roles and a story from a popular kids’ best seller. Auggie, as he’s known, has a facial deformity that he was born with and not even 27 operations have corrected. It’s disheartening to hear him ask “Why do I have to be so ugly?” Tremblay makes you feel deeply for him, although the movie refuses to pull the heartstrings too much and instead explores what the boy and his family have to do.

Major project: send him to school. After years of safety with homeschooling, that’s terror for him. Most kids feel some of that on their first day of school but this is extreme. Kids look at him; stay separate in the lunch room. There’s a bully and even a budding friend makes a verbal faux pas. All these details are carefully observed in Stephen Chbosky‘s precise direction. And there’s more. The family dynamics are sensitively explored. Sister Via (played by Izabela Vidovic) never gets even a fraction of the attention. At the same time, you can see why Auggie craves so much of it. He needs to feel he’s accepted. The film promotes kindness without resorting to preaching. It fits the season coming up. FYI: It was filmed here. You’ll recognize some of the streets and buildings and Ben Ratner as a drama teacher. (International Village, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres) 3 ½ out of 5

MUDBOUND: It seems that I can’t avoid Netflix films any longer. Anyway this one is very good and might get some awards consideration so I’ll give in.

This is a fresh look at the race issue in the U.S. south, bringing together, and apart, two families in rural Mississippi in the 1940s.The McAllans (Jason Clarke and Carey Mulligan) have moved there from Memphis as aspiring farmers. The Jacksons (Rob Morgan and Mary J. Blige) and several generations before them have farmed there as sharecroppers. They continue but are now beholden to the McAllans who own the land. That’s potential enough there for racial conflict and the film, based on a best-selling novel, brings forth another. Each family sent a son to the army to fight in Europe in World War II. When they (Garrett Hedlund and Jason Mitchell) return, they become close friends but get different treatment. One is a hero; the Jackson son is shunned. His liberator status over there is forgotten at home. Director Dee Rees, who also wrote the script, wrings a lot of emotional drama and some biting scenes of racism out of the story. It’s leisurely but very effective. (Netflix starting today) 4 out of 5

PARADISE: And here’s a very different look at the Holocaust. It focuses on three people and in between sequences showing their stories, gives us scenes of each of them sitting at a table, looking at the camera and telling what they were thinking. We’re not sure whether it’s an interview, an interrogation or a confession. It becomes all three. There’s a police chief in a small French town recalling the Jews he arrested. A woman, arrested for hiding two Jewish children, is a Russian princess and a former playgirl. A young German officer, from a distinguished military family, knew her years ago at a resort in the south of France and tried to renew the relationship as a commandant at a death camp.

Sounds gimmicky but it works. We get very thoughtful explanations from them, most of them from him. Some of it is the usual, Germany humiliated, the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler “touched our soul” with his vision of a German “paradise.” Some of his thinking gets very personal, although why he hated Jews so much is never made clear. He probably didn’t know why and just went along with it. “Joy was lifting me out of the abyss of despair,” he says. The film by Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky is more of an intellectual exercise than usual and hardly goes into the camps. It’s very strong though and revealing. It won a big award at the Venice Film Festival last year. (VanCity Theatre) 3 out of 5

THE DIVINE ORDER: Saudi Arabia has just allowed women to drive. More remarkable is it that Switzerland, a more progressive country, didn’t allow women to vote, until 1971. This rousing German-language film depicts the popular pressure that built up to make it happen through the evolution of a meek housewife. Her husband won’t let her take a job. She responds by getting in with a group of activists and agitating for the vote. Equality of the sexes is a sin against nature, says a clergyman. The director, Petra Volpe, develops a radical feminist ambience to tell the story, to the point of having the women study their private parts with a mirror and identifying seven types. That leads to a fiery shout at one husband: “There is a tiger between my legs.” (VanCity Theatre) 3 ½ out of 5

BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL: Takashi Miike of Japan is being honored like a cinema artist for this his 100th film. Judging from it, I’d say he’s a very competent director of b-movies featuring lots of violence, and apparently, although not here, sex. This is a Samurai story, based on a popular manga, (that has already been filmed once before). The main character, Manji kills several dozen samurai coming at him early in the film, is made immortal by an 800-year-old crone wearing a hoodie, and proceeds to wipe out another army near the end. Later he gets tired of immortality but that angle isn’t developed very fully.

He teams up with a young girl (who looks like his sister from years before) and she learns to do some chopping herself. And he has to face a villain who is taking over all the martial arts schools and imposing his style of fighting. There’s another villain who killed the girl’s father, for historical reasons. A lot of limbs get cut off but Manji’s reattach themselves. All this is flawlessly staged and quite engrossing, if you’re into this kind of stuff. It was on the bill at the Rio last night, starts at International Village today and opens again at the VanCity Theatre next Friday. 2 ½ out of 5

Also now playing …

THE STAR: The Nativity story told in animation through the animals who were at the stable that night. Steven Yeun voices a donkey, Tracy Morgan, Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey are camels, said to be “hilarious,” and Christopher Plummer is the voice of King Herod. It’s an American film but was made in Montreal. It’s playing at International Village but hasn’t gotten much a push, as far as I can see, by the studio.